Jean

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Jean boys named Jean

Girls and boys called Jean

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Jean crossed from girls to boys in 1990, and has stayed there for 36 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 82% boys, and in 2025 it was 67%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 146 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

483,475

Estimated living today

197,000

Median age today

71

Peak year

1927

Best rank

14th

Rank in 2025

2,117th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

458,436 / 25,039

How old the living Jeans are

born that year still alive today

Of the 483,475 babies given the name since 1880, about 197,000 are alive — 41 in every hundred. Roughly 4,400 of them are children and 136,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1954 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin French

Variant of Jeanne, from French Jeanne, from Old French Jehane, from Medieval Latin Johanna, variant of Latin Ioanna under influence from Latin Iōhannēs, from Koine Greek Ἰωάννα, from Hebrew יוֹחָנָה, the feminized form of יְהוֹחָנָן.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Jeans

• Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695)French poet, fabulist and writer
• Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)French writer and film director
• Jean Racine (died 1699)French dramatist
• Jean Le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783)French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher and music theorist
• Jean Piaget (1896–1980)Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher and academic
• Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)Finnish composer
• Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928–2025)French politician
• Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1870–1942)French physicist

People named Jean with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Jean is most common

• NY60,046
• PA47,085
• IL29,669
• OH26,634
• MA23,690
• CA22,072
• MI21,620
• NJ20,431
• WI19,082
• MN14,364

Relative to how many babies each state records, Jean is most concentrated in Vermont (2.1×), Massachusetts (2.1×), Wisconsin (2.0×), Pennsylvania (1.9×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1927

The most popular girls’ names the year Jean peaked:

• Mary
• Dorothy
• Betty
• Helen
• Margaret
• Ruth

All the names of 1927

Jean elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Jean: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Jean is most concentrated in Fribourg, where 0.10% of children were given it – 68 of them.

Jean: rank by region

In 2025, Jean was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2020, Jean was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jean appears in the lists for Province of Namur (39th), Province of Flemish Brabant (69th), Province of Antwerp (86th), Province of West Flanders (95th), Province of East Flanders (153rd), Province of Hainaut (174th) and Brussels-Capital Region (225th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Jean by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Jean among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Among girls in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 1,024 who carry it, 124 go by it.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Jean lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 511 men called Jean and 405 women called Jean were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 22 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 30 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Jeanette
• Jeanne
• Jeannette
• Jeannie
• Jeannine
• Jeanine
• Jeanie
• Jeanna
• Jeana
• Jeanetta
• Jeane
• Jeanene

Jean against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Jean vs Jeanne
• Jean vs Jeanette
• Jean vs Jeannette
• Jean vs Jeannie
• Jean vs Jeannine
• Jean vs Jeanine

Compare Jean with a name of your own